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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

I'm so lucky to have a large dedicated studio space with lots of natural light. I love this giant design wall my husband built for me. It's insulation board covered with batting and flannel and then framed. Most cotton fabrics will stick to the batting so I can easily re-position things without pinning. He also made my cutting table by adding legs to our old kitchen island top after we remodeled.

My sewing table was "rescued" from a dumpster and is perfectly situated for watching TV and gazing lovingly at my stash while I sew:-)

My stash has been getting a bit out of control and having everything stored in Sterlite bins wasn't really working anymore so for Mother's Day I asked for new shelving to store my fabric. We took a trip to IKEA and Dave and Audrey spent the weekend assembling my new Billy bookcases andLillhöjden chair.

Of course once I started looking around at all the awesome IKEA hacks I had to get fancy. Using the advice at Maillardville Manor we added strips of molding to join the bookcases together and then added a shelf on top to bridge the gap in the corner and get the look of built-ins.

Since then I've been working on fancy folding all of my fabric. Is anyone surprised that I have an entire bookcase just for pink? Eventually I hope to have it all nicely folded but for now it's enough to have it visible and accessible. It's like having my own fabric store stocked with all my favorite fabrics:-) I've also got plans to recover the loveseat... I'm thinking pink!

Friday, July 25, 2014

Don't Panic! I have to admit the first time I read through Oh, Fransson's adorable Preppy the Whale pattern I wondered what I'd gotten myself in to... each whale is made up of 16 different sized pieces. When you add in sashing and borders there are 462 pieces required to make the child sized version.

Fortunately, the directions are clearly written and once the cutting is done this goes together very quickly. It is just challenging enough to be interesting and the whales are so cute you just love seeing them come together! Sewing with this view also might have made things go together a bit easier:-)

For the quilting I wanted something fast and easy that wouldn't compete with cuteness of the whales. This was my first try at wavy organic lines and I LOVED it!!! I was able to quilt the entire top in an evening while drinking wine.

It was this close but for once I did NOT have a thread emergency that had me banging on the door at Quilter's Way first thing in the morning.

For the back I made one more whale as a label and pieced in the navy stripe (22 additional pieces) so I could get away with only using one length of this adorable anchor fabric.

A huge thank you to the lovely Elizabeth Hartman for letting my test this pattern! It was a pleasure every step of the way:-)

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Last night I put the last stitch in a quilt I have been hand quilting forever.

I don't remember when I started working on this... I'm guessing 2008. Definitely before I started blogging and documenting every moment of my life:-) It was hand-pieced by a friend who after quilting a few blocks decided she hated hand quilting and was never going to finish it. In a flash of insanity generosity I offered to finish quilting it for her.

Baseball games, football games, gymnastics meets, watching Audrey cheer... there I was quilting.

Obviously I've worked on lots of other things in the last 6 years but this was always packed and ready to go whenever I needed something to do. It still needs a binding but then I'll have to figure out my next epic project:-)

Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Other than a brief visit from Arthur our summer has been off to a fabulous start! I wasn't sure how much sewing time I'd actually get while we were in Maine but with so much swimming and water skiing by afternoon the kids are ready for a little quiet time which gives me a chance to sneak in some sewing:-) After my success with Murray the Whale I was ready to jump in and make the child sized version of Oh, Fransson!'s Preppy the Whale.

There are lots of pieces to cut and I found the key is to stay organized. It's easy to get confused with so many different sized pieces so I have a post-it marked pile for each component.

Once everything was cut I set up camp on the deck and started chain piecing my way through all those piles... I'm making good progress and only have a few more whales to go. As long as the sun keeps shining I should be done in no time:-)